By Stacey Patton
Washington
This isn't just the year of the massive open online course; it's also the year of two other hot topics in higher education—student debt and a barren job market for graduating students.

While people in higher education are struggling to adjust realistically to the supply-and-demand changes in the labor market, students need more-transparent information about the pathways into and out of graduate school now. That was the consensus among attendees at the Council of Graduate Schools' annual meeting held here last week.

In various sessions, deans and administrators discussed everything from faculty perceptions of the job prospects for graduate students and the ways some institutions are trying systematically to track outcomes (or not), to how to increase financial literacy on campuses at a time when undergraduate student debt and recent changes in federal loan policies are making it more difficult for students to attend and finish graduate school.

"The situation we face today is one of good news and bad news," said the council's president, Debra W. Stewart. "The good news is that there is broad bipartisan agreement here in Washington and among elite stakeholders that educating people up to the highest level possible is necessary for America to be competitive and prosperous. There are very few people who say they don't want their kids to go beyond college."

The issue going forward, Ms. Stewart said, is, "How are we going to find the money to do it?"

It was the end of an era. At 12:33 a.m. (EST) on Dec. 7, 1972 the monstrous Saturn V rocket blasted off for the final Apollo mission to the Moon. It was a stunning sight, as it was the first nighttime liftoff of the Saturn V. Aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft were astronauts Gene Cernan, Ron Evans and Jack Schmitt.

GRB 080913, a distant supernova detected by Swift. This image merges the view through Swift’s UltraViolet and Optical Telescope, which shows bright stars, and its X-ray Telescope. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler

The first moments of a massive star going supernova may be heralded by a blast of x-rays, detectable by space telescopes like Swift, which could then tell astronomers where to look for the full show in gamma rays and optical wavelengths. These findings come from the University of Leicester in the UK where a research team was surprised by the excess of thermal x-rays detected along with gamma ray bursts associated with supernovae.

“The most massive stars can be tens to a hundred times larger than the Sun,” said Dr. Rhaana Starling of the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy. “When one of these giants runs out of hydrogen gas it collapses catastrophically and explodes as a supernova, blowing off its outer layers which enrich the Universe.

“But this is no ordinary supernova; in the explosion narrowly confined streams of material are forced out of the poles of the star at almost the speed of light. These so-called relativistic jets give rise to brief flashes of energetic gamma-radiation called gamma-ray bursts, which are picked up by monitoring instruments in space, that in turn alert astronomers.”